


exulansis

by dullrockets



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Memory Loss, Multi, Time Travel, can be read as platonic ig if you just think of boyfriends as homies, everyone besides karl is mentioned, i like to think of it as platonic in my mind but in this fic its romantic, the relationship is only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29058579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dullrockets/pseuds/dullrockets
Summary: n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it(it's hard not to lose yourself, when you can't even remember your name.)
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	exulansis

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone today i've served some time traveler karl with with some memory loss sauce, a sprinkle of hurt no comfort, and an appetizer of angst
> 
> tws: mentions of god whilst describing dream, mentions of parents dying, mentions of a car crash, and i think there's some self destructive thoughts in there at one point
> 
> lowercase intentional
> 
> disclaimer: if any of the creators mention they are uncomfortable with these types of fics i will take this down. i do not ship the ccs, and the relationship in this fic is strictly in the dsmp, between the roles that they play.

_don’t lose yourself._

such a simple phrase, just three words, yet they hold so much meaning. karl knows this, feels this, is this. every day of his life, he whispers it into the air, screams it at the trees, says it to his journals. he has to say it, because if he didn’t, he would lose himself. that's what he tells himself. he knows it’s not true; it couldn’t be. 

if it was, he’d have lost himself years ago, would’ve locked his soul up in a box and slid it down a mountain, would’ve thrown the map that told him at least where it might be into fire.

everyone tells him it’ll be fine. they don’t even know what he’s going through, let alone what he’s seen. dream does, though. dream knows, even though he hasn’t even mentioned time travel. not in years, anyway; when he was little, so, so little, he asked his family if he could time travel, fixing everyone’s problems with just a little magic. 

they shook their heads, and scolded him with a stern look and said magic wasn’t real, it was just illusions. he vowed to change their minds. he did, too, the day after— or was it before?— he almost lost his dad in a car crash. he saved his life. they never scolded him after that, after what his dad saw in the fifteen seconds of placeholder that brought him through the ages.

dream probably found out because he acted as god (most thought he was). he isn’t anymore, anyway, now that (was his name theseus? thomas? all he could think of was the blond hair of a boy, and the screams of his friends) has put him in his place. he watches from afar, whenever he’s in the present (is it really the present, if he’s been to the future? isn’t it the past?), the way he rots in his cell.

karl knows he deserves every bit of what he gets. he’s dream, the almighty, the abuser, the— well, you get the idea. he is everything no one likes, no one wants. and he used to be able to hide it under a mask and a honey-like voice. now, all he could do was cower and watch his clock spin around in circles.

he only learns that dream messed with his friends’ minds far later than the day he was locked up. hell, he thought he was locked up for something more simple, like griefing george’s house. he knows that's a crime that only one has committed, and he knows it doesn’t end well. he still wishes, some nights, that he could’ve stopped it. he tells himself it had to happen. it didn’t, and he’s lying, but it helps him sleep.

sapnap and quackity have been following him for a few minutes now. he was going to go to his room, even though it wasn’t _his_ and it wasn’t home and it was just business. he can’t, though, because the thought of his partners seeing him like this, or having the possibility of seeing him even worse, in the future (he knows he could stop it. he can’t find himself to try) tears down the idea from the roots of it. 

he notes to never ask his mind to open up to them ever again, because the answer will sting like a slap to the face and he hates that feeling. not the pain itself, no, he’s felt far, far worse (he still wakes up from nightmares that end just after ranbob kills the friends he has never met but still cares so much for), but the idea that they could be feeling much more pain than he ever has in his life.

he knows what its like to lose someone. he has to deal with losses every fucking day, thanks to his idiocy saving his father, for his mother. he still blames himself for it, for not realizing that she was falling sick. for not realizing that every day she smiled softer, and looked smaller, and paler, and _so, so dead-looking_ . so, he’s decided that he will never, _ever_ make someone lose him. so, the first step, is to not lose himself.

he spends the day not travelling the placeholders with a book and quill, but laughing and smiling with his boyfriends. they look worried, under all the crinkled eyes and sparkling teeth. he can tell, he knows they’re worried, but he can’t bring himself to care. he doesn’t know if it was the way they frowned when he stopped responding, or the way they looked at each other when he had to wait for their names to show up in conversation to remember them.

(he hates himself for forgetting them. he remembers their faces, most of the time, and their personalities, and their warmth and their love, but it’s a rare occasion that he comes back from a trip with their names in mind. usually, he just has to run to get to his journal to write his diary statement, and more importantly get the whole exploration summarized, and forgets completely about anything else.)

it’s a horrible habit, he knows, and once, when he had the time to visit dream, he nearly killed him (he was already weakened, he realizes, but it still hurts to think about) when trying to get him to stop. he said that he’d lose himself. he knows he’s lost himself already, really. at least, who he used to be.

it’s changed him. but he’ll try his damn hardest to make sure no one has to go through the pain he feels. even if it means forcing a smile and a laugh every time a joke is made. even if it means picking a movie for them to watch that he doesn’t even remember loving since childhood. even if it means losing weeks of work for a day with his boyfriends, the ones he cares about so much more than saving the world, even if he tries to convince himself he doesn’t.

the art of convincing is hard, after all. infinitely harder when you’re convincing yourself; especially if you don’t believe in what you’re telling yourself. yet karl tries it anyway, and fails every night when he ends up crying himself to sleep and pretending that it’s sapnap in his arms as he sleeps, or quackity rubbing the circles on his back, and not a spare pillow, or his hands bending in places they shouldn’t bend.

shielding his friends from the world plus documenting the timelines as they come and go like the waves has proven to be difficult time and time again. he’s thought about quitting, a lot, but the acid green and purple swirl convinces him to stay in the game every time. _after all_ , it whispers to him in the night, _you have to help them. what are you without them, right?_

and he believes it. he eats up the lies it feeds him, and nearly forgets why he’s not putting all his attention on the world in the first place. that's when he stops trusting the spiral. everyone he’s working for, doing this for, gone down the drain with a simple night of tears? that doesn’t sound like karl. yet it almost was, and he snapped himself out of his trance with the thoughts of two blobby, mushed figures in the light, hugging him.

he doesn’t remember their names. he doesn’t remember what they look like. he walks past one of them, in the crater that he has as his base-of-operations’ front lawn. they look at him strangely, and their eyes shine with worry and compassion that could only come from the two people he loves most. he suppresses the urge to ask his name, and instead pulls him into a hug.

he hopes they don’t suspect anything. it would be a waste if they did; all the hiding, the lying, the whole story he made up for them to explain his disappearances, would be for nothing, and he would have to deal with the fact that he betrayed their trust and died (not physically, he wasn’t sure he could) doing it.

that night, he sculpts a grave with what he assumes to be his name. karl jacobs. it’s everywhere in the first few diary entries, but his name has become more sporadic in them, ever since the day he started to feed his memories into time and illusions. he doesn’t write a cause of death. he doesn’t know what he’s doing, really, it’s just a rainy night and by the time he figured out he had stone in his hands the grave was already made.

it sits in the crater. no one’s found it, yet. it has a bit of soulsand ( _his soul could be in there-_ ) in front of it, and a few marigolds in front of it, though they looked sad and seemed to get worse and more _dead-looking_ by the day. he’s forgotten his name, now, and he only vaguely remembers love and warmth with a man of fire and a man of laughter.

_a perfect combination that he’ll never get to feel again_ , he thinks as he walks through the portal as karl jacobs for the last time. 

(he comes out, wondering where he is and who he is, and he walks around the lands that are so unfamiliar to him with a small frown on his face, wondering why people are calling out the name “karl.” must be a strange coincidence in a strange land full of strange people.)

**Author's Note:**

> i hope i made you cry /lh
> 
> this was beta read by the one and only [NIC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic_L/pseuds/nic_takes_Ls) THANK YOU NIC!!!
> 
> (psst psst go follow me on [tumblr](https://dullrockets.tumblr.com/) it's worth it i swear)


End file.
